Everybody loves soup

Today, there are little snow flurries outside my window. It makes me feel like eating warm soup and sitting on the couch with a snuggie. That's not quite in the cards for me, but at least I can share this soup recipe with you. My family has made it for the past few years as a first course on Thanksgiving. My dad likes it, even though it has cream, cheese and butter in it (small amounts of each, don't worry).

Butternut Squash Soup adapted from Pie in the Sky

I double this recipe for Thanksgiving and other large occasions.

1 2-lb. butternut squash
1 t. olive oil
1 t. sea salt
fresh-cracked black pepper, to taste

1 large shallot, coarsely diced
2 T. plus 1 t. salted butter
1 t. chopped fresh sage leaves, plus 5-10 fresh sage leaves for garnish
1½+ cups chicken stock (or vegetable stock, if you're cooking for my parents. Safeway Select Organics is a good one and so is Kitchen Basics. Under pain of death, do not use Trader Joe's brand. I love Trader Joe's, but their vegetable stock tastes like feet)
1/2+ c. heavy cream
1/4 cup fresh-grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 t. freshly grated nutmeg
Salt and pepper, to taste

Cut squash in half and scoop out seeds. light oil cut sides of squash; sprinkle with salt and place cut-side-down on baking sheet. Bake at 370 degrees for 40-50 minutes, or until squash is very tender when pierced with a fork. Cool slightly; scoop out pulp, discarding the skin.


Mmmmm, orange squashy goodness. I could eat it now, but then there wouldn't be any soup.

Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a small sauté pan over medium heat. When butter begins to froth, add shallots; cook three minutes; add chopped sage. sauté for 2 more minutes, or until onions are tender and translucent.


There are few things in the world better than shallots and butter.

Melt additional butter in pan; add 1 cup stock and bring just to simmer. Remove onion mixture from heat and stir into squash pulp; puree in food processor in batches, adding more broth as necessary.

Pour pureed mixture into medium saucepan. Over low heat, stir in heavy cream, nutmeg, parmesan, and salt and pepper to taste (be sure to salt after adding cheese, which is salty itself!). Remove from heat.

I rarely do this next step because I get hungry/lazy. But you feel free! Melt remaining teaspoon salted butter in small sauté pan over medium heat; lay whole sage leaves in butter and fry until frizzled and slightly brown. transfer to paper towel to drain; garnish soup with crispy sage leaves. (Hint: frizzle ribbons of prosciutto with the sage for a special garnish!)


I could eat a lot of this soup. I like to keep it in a jar in my fridge and eat it when I'm too lazy to cook.

A legendary soup

You may have heard me talk about how much I love Julie Powell (the author of Julie and Julia). In her book, she talks about making Julia Child's Potage Parmentier (that's potato leek soup for you non-French speakers) and how great it is. So I figured I should give it a try. I realized I had five leeks and a bag of yellow potatoes in my fridge, so this seemed like a good day to go for it.


It is very simple (so says Julie Powell), which doesn't mean easy. You have to peel a bunch of potatoes (about 1 pound) and then slice or dice them up. Then you slice the same amount of leeks and wash them really well in a colander (mine were from my CSA box and were completely covered in dirt).

Then throw them in a pot with 2 quarts of water (or chicken broth - I did a mix of both) and one Tbs of salt - simmer them over moderate heat for about 45 minutes, partially covered (I balanced the pot lid over one side of the pot and my little espresso maker - I am such a professional). Once the vegetables are tender, it's time to blend them up.

Julia asks that you don't use a food processor or a blender - she wants you to use a food mill or a fork. I did just get a food mill (another wedding present - woot!) but I was too lazy to set it up. My immersion blender just called out to me, "Lena! Use me! I am so easy to use and already out of the box!" So I pureed about half of it with the immersion blender and left some chunks of potato in tact (as a sort of compromise with the ghost of Julia Child). Then I adjusted the seasoning and adding some cream (Julia says! She wanted me to add 6 Tbs, but I added about half that in deference to my girlish figure).


It's good - very filling, but it's not a wow. It's kind of bland for my taste - but it would be a good first course type thing - just not a whole meal.

I love my kitchen stuff

The great thing about getting married (along with vowing to spend the rest of your life with somebody awesome and having a great big party) is that people give you really cool stuff! Now I'm going to let you in on a little secret - our apartment isn't big enough to hold all of our cool new stuff, so some of it is piled up in a corner next to the couch. But every once in a while, I get frustrated that I have all this stuff that I've wanted for ages that I'm not actually using and I break something out of the corner. Today that something was my immersion blender.



Last week at Vesta, Joe had some awesome squash soup and I said, "hmmmmmm, I could make soup." I happen to have 3 acorn squash (not to mention about 1,000 apples) sitting on my counter, courtesy of my CSA, so I pulled a recipe from Martha Stewart/Emeril Lagasse off the internet and decided to give it a shot.

Acorn Squash Soup

3 acorn squash, halved, seed removed
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 carrots, chopped
1 Granny Smith apple, cored and chopped (I used two small random green apples in my fridge - the ones that were going a little soft and I didn't want to eat)
1 onion, chopped
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1/8 teaspoon allspice
4 cups low sodium chicken stock (you could use vegetable broth or water - but don't unless you're a vegetarian)

Preheat oven 400 degrees F.

On a baking sheet, roast the acorn squash, cut side down, until soft, about 45 minutes. Scoop out the squash flesh and set aside.

In a soup pot, heat olive oil over medium high heat. Saute carrot, apple, and onion until soft. Season with ginger and allspice. Add the squash and the chicken stock. Simmer for 15 to 20 minutes (I added about 1/2 tsp of salt as well - I just don't think it's cooking if you don't add salt).

Remove the pot from the heat and puree with a hand-held immersion blender. Yay! I got to use my blender. My sister thinks these blenders are evil, but that's just because she stuck her finger in the blade part and turned it on. Seriously. But don't let that turn you away from trying the soup.



It was very good - simple, but not bland. It's also creamy without having anything bad for you in it - which is the holy grail of cooking, as far as I'm concerned. I served it with a little salad - it was a great fall meal.

Another Passover Post

If I was really clever, I'd have set it up so that people could have made these for their sedars....but oh well.

Zack and I went to a sedar this weekend in Boston and had some great homemade matzo ball soup. When I got back to New York, I thought, "I bet I could do that." As someone who used to think that matzo balls came from a Manichevitz jar, this was quite the interesting challenge.

It turned out to be a snap. You could totally do this at home.

Matzo Balls!
2 Tbs fat, room temperature (I used duck fat, because I had it in the fridge. Chicken fat would be traditional. Or you can use vegetable oil)
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup matzo meal
1 tsp salt
2 Tbs seltzer (to keep it light)

1. Mix together the fat, eggs, matzo meal and salt.


2. Mix in the seltzer. It will bubble and be awesome. When everything is a uniform consistency, cover with plastic wrap and put in the fridge for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, boil some water.

3. Scoop out the mixture with a teaspoon into the boiling water. Try to make eight balls about an inch in diameter (they will GREATLY expand).


4. Cover and cook for 30-40 minutes.

That's all there is to it! At this point, you could save them in a Tupperware for a later date. Or you can make soup, or heat up a can or do whatever you want, and then add the matzo balls to the soup while it's heating up. All you have to do at this point is heat them through.

Here's one of mine is my homemade (but greatly shortcut-ed) soup.


It was really good - I mean, you could heat up some chicken broth and put the matzo ball in it and it would be good. But if you make some quick soup with a lot of vegetables, you'll feel better about eating giant balls of carbs.

Baby, it's cold outside

Happy Inauguration Day! If you're on the East coast watching the speeches, either outside on the mall or on TV, well then you're probably pretty cold. And what's good when you're cold? That's right, a big bowl of soup.

This recipe was given to me by my Aunt Terry, back around the time I first moved to New York. For many years, this was one of the only things I could make (this, chocolate chip cookies and smoked salmon pasta....that was pretty much it). I've made some minor adjustments to the recipe, but it pretty much stands the same. It's a wonderful filling delicious soup.

Tortilla Soup!

2 onions
2 peppers
1 pkg chicken breast
1 qt chicken stock
1 qt beef stock
1 28 oz can tomatoes (I use the whole ones and then blitz them in the food processor or just smoosh them with my hands, depending on my mood)
Lawry's seasoning salt
chili powder
basil (fresh or dried)

sour cream, chips, shredded cheese, avocado and lime as garnish

1. Dice your onions and pepper. Feel guilty about buying pepper at all in the winter time, as they were grown in Israel. Think that you are a really bad local food enthusiast. But see how pretty the peppers are?


Sigh. You could use any color pepper in the soup. I picked these today because they were pretty.

2. Get a really big pot. Put both the stocks in the pot, along with the onions and peppers. Simmer for about 30 minutes, or until the vegetables are tender.


3. Chop your chicken into bite size pieces. Add it to the pot, along with the tomatoes (if it wasn't winter, you could add fresh tomatoes and that would be excellent. But it's January, so....yeah). Add the spices to your taste. If you like it spicy, add more chili powder, or even some red pepper flakes. I added a few dried chilies instead of any powders, since I had some on hand. Add lots of Lawry's! It may seem low-rent, but it's awesome.


4. Simmer for a while longer, at least until the chicken is cooked through, but longer is better. The longer it cooks, the more the flavors meld together and the better it gets. This soup is ridiculously good the next day.

5. Ladle some in a big bowl and add all the toppings (you can use low fat sour cream if you're all health conscious, or low fat cheese, etc, but you really want to get a little bit of everything in the bowl). Meredith had the brilliant idea of adding a squeeze of lime. That was a nice touch.


Eat! You're going to want seconds. And thirds. I think I ended up having four or five servings of this over two or three days....Zack only got two. Whoops.

Cooking through the sickness

What's a girl to do while she waits for her antibiotics? Cook, of course. I had these vegetables in my house (courtesy of my CSA):


These seemed like a natural soup choice to me. I got my mom a new cookbook this weekend (Deborah Madison's Local Flavors - a cookbook devoted to seasonal farmer's market cooking) and I flipped through it and found this recipe for a simple potage (which as far as I can tell means potato soup. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong). It was so easy, I'm not even referring back to the book for what the directions were. I'm a maverick.

Leeks (I used two)
Potatoes (Yukon Gold preferred - I just grabbed a handful of small ones)
Baby Turnips (I just used a small bunch)
Chicken Stock (use water if you're a vegetarian. Or vegetable stock. But veggie stock is for losers)
salt and pepper
thyme
cream (optional)
1.5 Tbs butter

1. Wash and chop all your veggies. I chopped them, then washed them. I didn't peel the potatoes or the turnips. Potato skins are good for you and the turnips were really small. Wash the leeks really well, post chopping. Leeks are muddy little suckers.

2. Melt the butter in a large soup pot. Toss the vegetables in the butter and add 1/2 cup water or stock and some fresh thyme (or dried thyme if that's all you have). Simmer for five minutes.


Add 5 more cups of stock or water and some salt.


3. Bring to a boil, then bring down the heat to a simmer and let it simmer for 25-30 minutes. You can add some pepper here. And some more salt if you want. At this time, I decided I wanted to make my soup a little more pureed, but I didn't want to wash my food processor, so I just mashed it a bit with my potato masher.


4. There were still some larger bits, but I think that's okay. Varied textures! Then I added a little bit of cream (sinful, I know. But I added about 1/4 of a cup to a gigantic soup pot. You could even add less. Or no cream at all. Or some milk. Whatever floats your boat).


It turns a nice light color with the cream though. See?


5. Now eat it! I put a little more thyme on top as a garnish. Garnishes make my photos look really nice.


Enjoy!

Some days are like that, even in Australia

What do you do when you've had a bad day? Maybe you woke up at 6:45 and got halfway to an audition before you realized you'd left your headshot and resume at home. Maybe your grad school letter didn't arrive even though it was supposed to and when you called to ask about it, the office was closed. Maybe you had to mail off a check for several hundred dollars to the government because it was tax day. If all these things happened, there's really only one thing to do: make some old fashioned feel better soup.

Lazy-Ass Matzo Ball Soup

at least 2 cups chicken broth
leftover/rotisserie chicken
1 carrot
1 stalk celery
1 onion
dill
pepper
1 large matzo ball

It's called lazy-ass soup because of all the prepared ingredients like these:

But sometimes, you just don't have three hours of simmering time but you still want soup and canned soup is gross. Plus, buying prepared matzo balls stimulates the economy. Maybe. If you don't think about it too hard. Let's just move on.

1. Chop your veggies. If I wasn't in a crabby mood, I might have chopped them smaller (which actually I ended up regretting later), but I didn't.


2. Put them in a pot, cover them with the chicken broth and simmer until the veggies are soft (I left them in there for about 20 minutes, got hungry and skipped to the end. I kind of wished the veggies were softer (and hey, if I'd cut them smaller, they probably would be by now) but oh well).

I should probably clean my stove. Hmm.

3. This is where you use your prepared chicken. I bought a "simple rotisserie chicken" from Whole Foods. If I'd bought it from my neighborhood grocery store in Queens, it would have been 4 dollars less, but I wasn't in Queens, I was in Whole Foods and that's how it goes.


Don't get the "herb" or "bbq" kind - those will add weird flavors to your soup. But maybe you're into that.

Tear off a bit of the chicken (I used one breast) and shred it with your hands.


4. Dump it in with the veggies. Throw the matzo ball in there too (I got my matzo ball from Zabar's, remember? If you don't, look here). Add some dill and pepper to taste. You can use fresh dill if you have some, but I didn't and I wouldn't expect you to either.


5. Leave it simmering a few more minutes (you can cover it, that helps) until the matzo ball is heated through.

6. Pour it all into one bowl because your boyfriend is working late (again. And every other night for the next week. Gah). Eat it on a tv tray while you watch Dreamgirls on DVD and think about how even though you're crabby, at least you're not having Jamie Foxx's illegitimate child and being upstaged by Beyonce even though you're way more talented than she is.


There's not much broth left. Whoops. It's more of a "stoup" as Rachael Ray would say. If you add more broth, that won't happen to you. But it still tastes good, so you don't really have to worry too much. Enjoy!